Canadian Asbestos Exports

So I already knew that despite asbestos being banned in Canada (among many other places), we still export it to countries with poor health and safety regulations, which I find pretty horific. I was watching a CBC news segment on a flight a couple ago of days about it which brought it back to mind. For one thing, they pointed out that only around 500 people are employed by this in Canada. This seems like a pretty clear-cut case of us doing the wrong thing.

So I figured there must be a petition on this, so I’d just go online and find it and sign it. Not so simple it turns out. There are, and have been, lots of petitions. As recently as the last few weeks, there is a new petition, but it seems like only companies can sign it; I’m not entirely sure what the point of that is. Here is a petition received by the government in 1997 along with what I would describe as an extremely pathetic and predictable government reply. The reply basically says that we tell other countries to use it safely, and it’s not our fault if they don’t listen and die as a result.

Finally I find the Ban Asbestos Canada website, which includes a broken link to an actual petition, and I managed to figure out what the real link is supposed to be. So go this petition page and from there you can enter in a few details to send a letter to all of the federal party leaders. If I were them I would also add on the relevant cabinet ministers (Health, Trade, Natural Resources, Public Safety, maybe a few others), and the MP and MPP for the riding that includes the remaining asbestos mine.

Oh, and I checked Facebook too. There are at least seven petitiony groups on this (of course), but the largest has only 230 members.